I stood up on my pedals for the climb’s final push, motivated by visions of finally winning one of these local mountain bike races.  Clenching my teeth, I leaned forward and stomped my foot down, only to hear the grating metallic snap of a broken chain.  My feet spun aimlessly, I lost my balance, and I fell to the side of the trail – right into a Carhartt-clad, muscle-bound man, the guy everyone in town referred to as “Rasta.”  He’d been posted alongside this steep hill with a first aid kit and a radio, assigned to call in the bib numbers of passing riders and to help with crises as they arose.  I think the only crisis that day was mine. “Looks like you might could use some help,” he said, once I’d unclipped from my pedals and crawled out from under my bike.  While I dug around in my pack for the tools I needed, he introduced himself – a formality, really, since his reputation as Eastern Idaho’s Dionysian bad boy was well-established.  He wasn’t tall, but he was dark and handsome, and he had that sly grin and soul patch combination that was known to cloud my judgment.  By the time his leathery hands were entangled in my derailleur, he’d already asked me about my plans for the evening.  I told him I hadn’t thought that far ahead, that I still needed to get back on my bike and win the race.

 Later, after I’d collected my second-place beer stein, he strutted up to me. “Now, that party I was telling you about – it starts around seven.  How ‘bout I pick you up at sixish for dinner and we’ll go from there.  Where do you live?”  

Just like that, I was roped into attending what Rasta had called a “Bullshit Bingo” party – one where the hosts spray-painted numbers inside their backyard corral while the guests drew up bingo cards containing those same numbers.  “Are you guys in?” one of the homeowners asked.  “Fuck, yeah!” Rasta shouted on our behalf, as he pulled two twenties out of his wallet and grabbed a couple of Sharpie markers. “We can outsmart that bull’s intestines!” We drank Jack and Coke, cheered for our bovine companion, and plunked down bingo chips when the angry thousand-pound animal deposited his “chips” in the corresponding dirt spaces.  Where on earth was I?  I’d taught yoga for a decade in this tiny town that I’d moved to after college, but I’d never seen any of these people, much less spent a Saturday night betting real money on cow dung.  A permanent expression of astonishment was plastered to my face, and yet, I laughed harder than I had in years.

Curiosity overpowered good sense, and I agreed to a series of additional dates with Rasta.  We spent a few autumn afternoons in the forest working on his pet trail project, one he was calling “The Freedom Trail” – a windy stretch of singletrack that ran right through a golden aspen grove.  We swung pulaskis and moved rocks for hours, pausing only to split a sandwich and consult one another about the proper bank of a turn.  Later that fall, we stood front and center at an all-women’s AC/DC cover band show, where he bought shots of Jägermeister for all five of the musicians.  As winter approached, we pitched our old skis into a giant bonfire at a party dedicated to Ullr, the Norse god of snow.  We escaped just before the cops fined the host for lighting a fire without a permit.  “I might not always be fun, but I’m always an adventure,” he told me.

I wasn’t entirely sure who Rasta was beneath his tanned bravado, but one thing was for certain: he wasn’t my father.  

My father is a hedge fund manager. When I was young, he donned a three-piece suit every morning and rode New Jersey Transit and PATH trains to the World Trade Center.  He picked fights with my brother and me at the breakfast table.  “We’ve got to get your juices flowing!” he’d shout, to prepare us for our days in gifted and talented classes and our futures in the Supreme Court.  Although he travelled for much of my childhood, we walked the dog on weekends and found time to throw a softball around.  He edited my English papers, boldly striking through whole sentences with his gold Cross pen, and he drove me to swim meets all over the state.  I remember wishing he’d ask me more about my art projects and the books I was reading, about who I was and what I wanted.  I constantly prodded him to tell stories about growing up in the Bronx with five sisters or serving as an Army accountant in the Korean War.  Eventually, I realized that his past – and his emotions – were on lockdown.

He sent me to a private high school and an Ivy League college, and I was – and am – incredibly grateful for that.  But, after earning a full-blown gastric ulcer with my bachelor’s degree, I couldn’t take another step along the competition-oriented path he’d set out for me.  I moved west and became a sometime-wilderness guide, sometime-yoga teacher, and sometime-catering slave.

Rasta owned a garage door installation company and made quite a bit of money for a single guy in Idaho. He spent it all on toys: two mountain bikes, two dirt bikes, two snowmachines, three pairs of skis, and an enormous, gas-guzzling truck. While we initially spent most of our time in the woods finding new terrain to explore on mountain bikes (or “struggle buggies,” as he called them), Rasta eventually took me to Idaho Falls to help me buy a dirt bike.  When his salesman buddy suggested one of the entry-level women’s models, Rasta jumped in. “No sir, Marty.  This here’s a burly mountain gal.  She needs a real ride, not a shitty wife bike.  Let’s test drive some 250’s.”  He let me stall that thing on hills, drop it in ruts, and even crack the clutch cover.  He’d offer a tip here and there – he was as skilled at this sport as every other one he pursued – but mostly, he trusted me to figure things out. 

We didn’t really talk about our pasts or our futures; we talked about where we were and what we were doing.  I’m not sure he ever knew what I did for a living or where I’d grown up.  I’m pretty certain he wasn’t interested.  But I knew he’d have my back if I got into trouble in the woods.  

At no point during the eight or nine months we spent “hanging out” did I know when we’d see each other next.  Rasta never picked up the phone when I called, so we only talked when he initiated contact.  Some weeks, I’d hear from him every day. Other times, he’d disappear from my radar for a week or two. One of those times, he’d gotten himself thrown into the county correctional facility.  Our small-town cops had followed him home from the ski hill one gloriously clear Sunday, after we’d tracked up two feet of fresh powder and he’d indulged in at least one illegal substance.  They slapped some paraphernalia charges on top of his delinquent alimony payments (“I’m trying to send that crazy woman a message,” he’d said), amassing sufficient cause to send him to the big house. 

Once I’d put two and two together, I drove down to visit him.  “How’d you find me?” he asked through the Lexan shield that separated us. While the armpits of my thermal t-shirt became soaked with nervous sweat, Rasta explained why he loved jail – no pesky clients calling, no need to cook, plenty of free time (“Have you ever read Huck Finn? They’ve got it in the library here.  It’s pretty good!”).  I’d thought my visit would brighten his day, or at least break up the monotony of his solitude.  Instead, all it did was interrupt his legally-mandated vacation.  During the drive home, I struggled to keep my car on the blustery, deserted highway as I worked to extricate myself from a snarl of shame and confusion – I’d actually thought this visit might precipitate some kind of breakthrough.  I wondered what my father would think if he knew I’d spent the afternoon visiting my foul-mouthed, pot-smoking, not-really-a-boyfriend in his orange jumpsuit.

Not that I told my father about Rasta, or about any of the guys I dated.  Once, I’d taken a boyfriend of five years back to New Jersey.  “How’s what’s-his-name doing?” my father asked during our next Sunday afternoon call.  Without allowing room for an answer, he continued. “So, big news at the club. We’ve just put five hundred brown trout fingerlings into Little Bright Creek.”  By that time, my father had become disillusioned with Wall Street and was devoting most of his mental energy to fly-fishing.

“You’ve got enough money already,” I once said to him. “Why don’t you just retire – maybe move to Montana and guide, work at what you love for the rest of your days?”  He never really responded to that question, but I knew the answer.  He wasn’t like the guys I dated.

Not long after Rasta’s lawyer cleared him of all his charges (“My guy even got me out of probation, baby!”), our adult broomball league hosted a tournament at the local ice rink. It was a crystal-clear January night, which meant that the ambient air temperature was hovering at about negative five.  We were blasting the heat in his Chevy Silverado and waiting for our game to start when the cheery opening notes of Meatloaf’s “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” filled the cab.  Rasta flashed me a knowing grin and jumped right into the male role, singing, “I remember every single word as if it happened only yesterday…”  He didn’t have much of a voice, but his enthusiasm was contagious.  By the time I could chime in with Ellen Foley’s part, an octave above his (“Though it’s cold and lonely in the deep dark night…”), Rasta had started air drumming on the steering wheel.  I grabbed an adjustable wrench from between the seats and beat the bass line into the dashboard.  When the song paused, we looked at each other, took deep breaths, and shouted the song’s climax lyric in unison, “Stop right there!  Before I go any further do you love me…”  Eight and a half minutes later, we collapsed back into the cushy bench seat, laughing.  “Nicely done, baby,” he said, giving me a high five and a kiss.  He finished his beer and we hopped out of the truck to face “The Local Yokels” in the ice rink.

After the game, when he pulled into my icy driveway, I wrapped my fingers around the door handle and turned to him.  “Look, Rasta,” I said, “I’ve got to ask you, what kind of relationship are we in anyway?  I mean, I love spending time with you.  I always have a blast.  But, I never really know what’s going on with us, you know?  What is this, exactly?”

For the first time, I saw him pause before opening his mouth.  He stared straight ahead, as if there was something to see besides snow-encrusted sagebrush in the beam of his headlights.  “I’m giving you everything I can,” he finally said.  “I just don’t have any more.”  After taking a deep breath, I told him that his everything wasn’t enough, that I was looking for someone to check in with me, someone who knew where I was and wondered about what I wanted – a request that hadn’t seemed so unreasonable when I’d thought it over earlier that day.  “Well alright, then,” he said.  “I gotta go, baby.” He slammed his truck into reverse, and I slid out of the passenger’s seat into the emptiness of sub-zero night, determined not feel any moisture freezing around the corners of my eyes. 

I dated a string of “nicer” guys after Rasta – guys who knew every detail about my life and unquestioningly supported everything I said and did.  But I always found myself wishing I were driving over the pass in Rasta’s ’74 Trans Am or chasing his dust on a boulder-strewn trail.  None of those nice guys lasted either.

Recently, I went to my father’s fishing club, as part of my effort to meet him on his terrain.  It’s all male, of course, but there’s one woman at the lodge who cooks their meals.  Her furrowed brow softened when I introduced myself.  She’d listened to story after story about me over the years, she said – tales of my travels, my writing, my biking, my racing.  “It’s always ‘my daughter did this’ and ‘my daughter did that.’ The men here and I all feel like we know you so well.”  I started crying uncontrollably in that unfamiliar kitchen, with venison steaks sizzling on the stove and steam fogging up the windows.  She took a hold of my hands in hers.  “He’s just who he is, honey.  He’s just who he is.”

Not long after I returned from that east coast visit, I went to a Halloween party with one of my nice guys. While he made his way to the bathroom, one of Rasta’s good friends cornered me. “I’ve taken off my mask, I’m drunk as shit, and I gotta tell you something that’s been eating at me for a long time,” he said, as he launched into a description of a wedding that both he and Rasta had just attended. At some point, the two of them had gone for a walk, and, apparently, Rasta spontaneously broke down. “I tell you, girl, it was crazy. He starts saying stuff like, ‘She actually took me for who I was and put up with my crap and did all this crazy shit with me.’ All the sudden, he’s bawling his eyes out – Mr. Tough Guy, there, crying buckets. Then he turns and says to me, ‘I loved her, man. I fuckin’ loved her, and I walked away.’” His eyes were penetrating, even though his drunken haze. “He meant you, you know?” 

I still call my father every Sunday.  Before I do, I have my answers prepared.  “Well, hello hello,” is his standard opening.  “How’s the snow?  The Weather Channel says you’re going to get another foot.”      

“Yep.  But it’s in the mid 30’s out there now, so it’s swinging back and forth between snow and rain – you know, the stuff we call ‘snain.’  How was your weekend?”

“Very good, very good.  I’m here at the club right now.  The excavator’s in, pulling silt out of Miller’s Pool.  I managed to talk all the other members into pitching in another $200 each for shade trees to line the banks, so I have the guy digging holes too.  You know, we’ve got to keep the water temperature down this summer or the fish won’t linger by those nice mossy ledges.”

“Good job.  And how’s the fund doing?”

Weather.  Work.  Fishing.  I know better than to expect him to ask if I’m writing, if I’m happy, or if I’m seeing anyone.  I’m not. 

“Well, I’ve got to get back to this – the guy’s got a steep hourly rate.  Keep me posted, and have a good week.”

As he hangs up, I can picture him on the far side of Little Bright Creek, stuffing his phone back into his pocket and supervising progress from behind his polarized fishing glasses. 

– Bridget A. Lyons